Phased Construction on Occupied Wyoming Sites
The wing next door is still full of patients. That is the starting condition on many hospital and clinic jobs, and it is the reason phased work on an occupied site is its own discipline. Wyoming Medical Center in Casper is a 249-bed Level II trauma center. Evanston Regional Hospital dates its service to the community to 1950. Neither can close a floor for a season while a contractor works. The building has to keep running while we change it.
We build and renovate around people who stay in the building: patients, students, tenants, shoppers and staff. The work is divided into phases, and each phase has a defined area, a protected path, a start, an end and a handoff. Walls, barriers, air pressure, dust, vibration, noise, egress and utility shutdowns are all planned before the first demolition.
In a small town there is one hospital, one school and one main street. If we make a mistake, everyone hears about it.
Phase plan before demolition
We build the phase plan with the owner, the facility staff and the design team. It shows what space comes offline, when, for how long, and where those people and functions go. It shows temporary walls, temporary exits, construction entrances, haul routes and parking for the crew. We walk it with the fire marshal or building official whenever egress or fire alarm coverage changes.
Then we test the plan against the calendar. Hospitals have surgery schedules. Schools have terms. Offices have quarter ends. Retail has holiday weeks. We schedule noisy and disruptive work for the quiet windows and we protect the busy ones. The plan stays on a wall in the site office and gets reviewed every week with the owner's representative.
Dust, infection control and people
Healthcare projects need infection control risk assessment, and the plan sets barriers, negative air, walk-off mats, cleaning frequency and monitoring. We build to that plan and train every worker on it. Schools and offices need dust and noise control as well, although the standard is different. Fire protection systems stay live, and any impairment is announced and tracked.
People safety goes beyond dust. Construction vehicles, scaffolds and open edges share ground with the public, so fences, signs and spotters are standard. On a campus like the University of Wyoming in Laramie, with about 8,200 in-person students in fall 2024, foot traffic is heavy and unpredictable. We plan paths so a student on a phone never ends up near a crane swing. See how this plays out in our school and campus construction.
Utility shutdowns and weekend work
The hard parts of a phase are the tie-ins: electrical, water, medical gas, fire alarm, HVAC and data. Each one means a planned outage. We write a shutdown request for each, with the time, the duration, the affected area and the backup plan. The owner approves it, and we do the work only inside the approved window.
Many of these outages happen at night or on weekends, which means overtime and crews that are willing to travel. In winter, they also mean planning heat. Taking a boiler offline in January requires a temporary source. We bring in temporary heat or work in sections so that no one is left cold. We tie these tasks to renovation and adaptive reuse planning, which uses the same outage discipline.
What we build in phases
Typical phased scopes include hospital wings, clinic expansions, school additions, classroom renovations, office remodels, retail store refreshes and hotel room renovations. We handle selective demolition, structural changes, new envelope, mechanical and electrical upgrades, finishes and equipment installation. Each phase ends with inspection and turnover, and the owner takes the space back before we start the next one.
Many phased projects include new construction next to the existing building. A new wing on a live campus means excavation, steel and concrete close to occupied rooms. We coordinate with healthcare construction teams on vibration limits and access, and with tenant improvement work when the project is a busy floor of leased space.
Where phasing matters most
Hospitals and clinics lead the list, since closing them is not an option. Schools and colleges are next, because the calendar is fixed. Offices and retail centers follow, because tenants pay rent and customers leave when a lot is blocked. Hotels need room-by-room or floor-by-floor phasing to keep revenue coming in.
Government buildings are another type. Courthouses, city halls and public safety buildings often have to stay open. The healthcare systems we work with tend to ask the sharpest questions about phasing, and we answer them with a drawn plan, not a promise.
The price of working around people
Phased work costs more than empty-building work. Protection, temporary walls, off-hour labor, slower production and extra cleaning all add up. The number depends on the number of phases, the sensitivity of the space and how much the schedule can flex. Fewer, larger phases are cheaper to build but harder on operations. Many small phases are gentle on operations and expensive to build.
We price both ways when the owner is unsure, and we show the effect on the schedule. Many owners find a middle path that costs a bit more than the cheapest and disrupts far less. We help find it early, before the design commits to a sequence that cannot be built. Distance adds to the picture too. A specialist subcontractor who has to drive hours to a weekend outage needs a firm date, so we confirm every outage with every trade two days ahead and again the morning.
Tell us what has to stay open
Tell us which areas must stay in service and which can move. We will sketch phases and a schedule. For campus work, our Laramie projects are a useful reference, as are the hospital communities of Casper and Evanston.
Questions Owners Ask
How do you keep dust out of occupied areas?
We use sealed barriers, negative air machines with filtration, sticky mats at the exits and regular cleaning. We monitor the barrier daily and fix leaks the same hour. Healthcare areas follow a written infection control plan with set inspections.
Can we keep operating during construction?
In most cases, yes. The plan defines what stays open and what moves. Sometimes a department has to relocate temporarily. We show you the options before design is final.
How do you handle utility shutdowns?
We submit a written shutdown request for each outage. It gives the time, the area, the duration and the backup plan. The work happens inside the approved window, and we test and restore service before we leave.
What does phasing do to the schedule?
It lengthens it. Work that could be done in a single sweep is done in sections, and each section has setup and handoff time. We give a schedule for each phasing option so you can compare them.
Who talks to our staff and tenants?
We assign one superintendent as the single point of contact. We send notices before noisy or disruptive work and keep a short list of numbers on site.